Ship of Ghosts by James D. Hornfischer

walls of water surely two hundred feet high, from clouds of flame-shot smoke,
Houston
emerged, racing ahead. A miracle. We sighted her mast. Then her upper deck—it was a rippling sheet of flame. She was surging and bouncing and skidding like a toy ship spinning upon whirlpools.” By the time the bombers vanished, the only friendly casualty was a U.S. soldier on the
Mauna Loa,
hit by shrapnel from a near miss. He was taken aboard the
Houston,
but her pharmacist’s mates were helpless to save him.
    As the convoy slugged north by night, the startling news came that Timor was already in enemy hands. The convoy promptly turned around and set course again for Darwin. The frustration aboard the
Houston
was palpable, leavened only briefly by the consoling wild cheers the troops in the four transports sent up—the Australians the loudest—as their sleek protector took station at the head of their column on the return journey. Ham sandwiches and cups of coffee in hand, faces and dungarees black with gun grease, the crewmen of the
Houston
came topside to bask in the celebratory roar. “It was a proud moment,” recalled Bill Weissinger, a gunner on the number-one five-inch mount on the starboard side. “The men were crying and may not even have realized it. The tears were streaming down their face and making clean channels down their cheeks.”

CHAPTER 8
    T he astonishing progress of the Japanese in oceanic Asia was putting the entire issue of defending Java into doubt. They were advancing in a pincer movement. The Imperial Navy’s Western Attack Group, with seven cruisers, twenty-five destroyers, and fifty-six transports and cargo ships, was under way from Camranh Bay, Indochina, on course for Batavia and western Java. The Japanese Eastern Attack Group, with one cruiser, six destroyers, and forty-one transports, accompanied by three cruisers and seven destroyers of the Eastern Covering Group, threatened Surabaya and eastern Java. Fighting blind, without air cover or reconnaissance, the ABDA nations would be hard-pressed to muster enough strength to stop either arm.
    On February 15, Singapore capitulated, less than a week after Field Marshal Wavell declared its unbreachable strength. That same day, with the
Houston
at sea between Timor and Darwin, Admiral Doorman led his striking force up the Karimata Strait to challenge the enemy’s advance toward the Sumatran oil center of Palembang. The Japanese found him first, hitting him with a naval air raid that damaged the Australian light cruiser
Hobart
and two U.S. destroyers. Doorman returned to Batavia with nothing to show for his dash. In the east, prospects were no brighter. The capture of Timor meantthat Surabaya, Java’s capital, would come under regular land-based air attack. Allied ships would operate in the Java Sea at their deep peril, exposed to attack from three directions.
    The
Houston
returned to Darwin with her Timor convoy on the afternoon of February 18, refueled from a barge, and set sail again around 5:30 p.m ., under orders to rejoin Doorman. It was just as well for the
Houston
to be clear of Darwin’s waters. The next night, the crew heard Tokyo Rose announce that the Japanese First Carrier Fleet, under Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo, leader of the Pearl Harbor striking force, had launched a devastating surprise attack on the port.
    A strike of 188 fighters and dive-bombers from the
Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu,
and
Soryu,
fresh from the Pearl Harbor raid, overwhelmed the ten American P-40 Warhawks sent to intercept them and, bolstered by fifty-four bombers flying from Kendari and Ambon, left the airdrome a shambles, its storage facilities ravaged, and thirteen ships sunk, including the
Meigs,
the
Mauna Loa,
and the destroyer
Peary
with most of her crew. Tokyo Rose added the
Houston
to the list, a fictional flourish so familiar by now that it no longer much amused anyone. That day too Japanese fighters swept over Surabaya and elements of the Japanese Sixteenth Army, ferried